


Ode to Insomnia

by Spooky66



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Depression, F/M, Insomnia, my darling fox mulder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2019-03-06 01:24:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13400511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spooky66/pseuds/Spooky66
Summary: Written on a sleepless night. Unedited. But I think it's good. A short history of Mulder's complicated relationship with sleep.





	Ode to Insomnia

The insomnia starts after Samantha disappears. At first, it’s cause he stays awake hoping that she will magically walk through the door and later it’s because he knows she won’t. 

To be fair he’d always been a bad sleeper, his mother could bore a crowd telling stories of how difficult it was to get Fox to sleep even as an infant, but it doesn’t become chronic till she’s gone.  
He drags himself through the day and passes out after school, only to wake up around midnight. Mulder finds that he averages about 4 hours a night, 30 a week would be pushing it though. The only time he’s ever able to sleep well is during the day. At times he wonders if it’s the dark that scares him.

In college, his insomnia works well for him. His nights are spent studying or enjoying (and sometimes crying over) Phoebe Green.

The FBI seems made for his sleep schedule as well. Often Fox Mulder will find himself still in his office at 3am wondering why it’s so quiet.

When Scully enters his life he encourages her own bad sleeping habits. Of course, Scully can fall asleep on a dime but chooses to use her time at night for more productive things than sleeping.  
At least she chooses to stay awake at the beginning of their partnership, later he realizes it’s because she too is afraid of the dark. Both of them know that they can find each other on the other end of the phone at all hours. More often than not Mulder is waking her up but her complaints are weak and it’s not difficult for him to pique her interest, even at 1am. 

Something odd happens to both of them when they begin sharing a bed they sleep. Mulder still wakes up often enough but doesn’t have the drive to leave the warm bed so eventually, he falls asleep watching her even breathing. 

After months in the ground sleeping Mulder is surprised to find that when he is discharged from the hospital all he wants to do is sleep. It’s a restless sleep that often leaves him waking up in a sweaty panic reaching for an absent Scully. 

He yearns for her at night but all of his questions keep him away for some time until one night he arrives at her door, tears in his eyes, praying that she will let him stay. With her still slender but newly rounded body held between his arms, he is able to sleep somewhat more peacefully. 

On the road, it is harder. At night he can’t stop thinking of her and their son. He wonders if she stays awake at night thinking of him too and if his son even misses him. 

Mulder imagines her up rocking their baby wishing he was there. In his fantasies, he comes up behind her and wraps his arms around her waist as he looks down upon the sleeping boy.  
Rather than putting him to sleep these thoughts keep him awake and miserable. 

His second stint on the road is easier with her there. She’s back to her normal tiny size and they don’t discuss it. But it keeps both of them up at night. 

Years later in their own home the words unsaid still keep them awake but apart. Instead of cuddling together when they can’t sleep they fake it to avoid conversation.  
Eventually Mulder gives up on sleep like he did before they started sharing a bed, and soon he spends any of his sleeping time on the couch. 

When she finally leaves him he sleeps for days; he wraps himself in their bed and smells her around him and sleeps there as if it could bring her back. 

After the X Files are reopened they find themselves on the phone most nights, each unwilling to hang up, just like the 90s. 

One rainy, sleepless night they fight over the phone. He can’t remember how the fight started but as he tries, and fails, to fall asleep he realizes it doesn’t matter. Getting into his car and driving into the city is an easy decision, it’s less easy to knock on her door at 12:30am but when he does she answers as if she’d been waiting for him. 

He curls around her like he’d done for so many years and finally, blessedly, falls asleep.


End file.
